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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What does the narrator compare the dead woman's hair to?
2. What technique is employed in the phrase "and justice for all" (234)?
3. What is the rhetorical purpose of the anaphora in the narrator's description of the Gold Coast residents having sex?
4. What happens after the night on the beach, when the narrator senses Gin growing distant while they are kissing?
5. What technique is evident in the phrase "feverish plucking and twanging, tom-toms, congas, and gongs" (235)?
Short Essay Questions
1. What is the rhetorical purpose of the narrator's comments about the "bloodless way in which a young man discards his own virginity" (235)?
2. When the narrator and Gin are on the beach, what does the narrator imagine the people along the Gold Coast doing, and what thematic ideas does his description convey?
3. How is the From Here to Eternity love scene evoked ironically when the narrator and Gin are on the beach?
4. Where are some of the places listed in the poem's opening paragraph, and how do they convey the couple's youth?
5. What plot events--one immediate and one later--are foreshadowed by the narrator's description of "the bodies of lovers...visible in lightning flashes, scattered like the fallen on a battlefield" (234)?
6. On page 233, the narrator describes the girlfriend's mother's car as having "a rosary twined [around] the rearview mirror like a beaded, black snake with silver, cruciform fangs." Describe the tone of this image and explain how it is related to the narrator's later description of unbuttoning his girlfriend's shirt.
7. What point about the relationship between men and women is made by the details the narrator observes on his train ride home after the night at Oak Street Beach?
8. Explain the relationship of the story's title to the Amichai poem excerpt used as an epigraph.
9. What is the rhetorical purpose of including the narrator's loss of the condom right before the drowned woman's body is discovered?
10. What scenario does Gin keep thinking about after the night on Oak Street Beach?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Write an essay in which you analyze the strategies that Dybek uses to build the tension that conveys the narrator's sexual desire. Comment on how the use of these strategies to build tension changes after the discovery of the body on the beach, and why. Use textual evidence to support your claims.
Essay Topic 2
Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the role of comic techniques in "We Didn't." Identify the techniques that are used as you offer your ideas about the purpose of including humorous moments in the story. Use quoted textual evidence to support your assertions.
Essay Topic 3
Stuart Dybek is also a respected poet. Read his poem "Night of Voyeurs," (available online) in which he is also writing about sex and the city of Chicago. Consider what role sexuality plays in this poem and then write an essay that compares and contrasts the meaning of sex in this poem with the meaning of sex in "We Didn't."
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This section contains 1,368 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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